Tag Archives: Great British Bake Off

I was only interested when I heard about Bingate (I wanted to call it BakedAlaskaGate but my boyf tells me that it “doesn’t flow properly”. Fuck it, what does he know? I’m the one who did English stuff at university so I know how to speak things gooder than him anyways).

I had heard that the British Bake Off was a rather tame affair. I don’t like my TV too tame, but I also don’t like it with too much drama. I like to think of myself as a reasonably stoic person: I don’t like crying in front of people, I don’t like public declarations of love and I’m not a massive fan of hugging. So I don’t go in for things like Hell’s Kitchen or Masterchef because I can’t handle amateur chefs falling to their knees and poking their eyes out with corn cob skewers because their soufflé hasn’t risen properly. But GBBO seemed a little dull to me. Sure you made meringue, but who did you sabotage to make it so chewy?

You see my dilemma.

That’s why I was so intrigued by BakedAlaskaGate. This year it was still the nice show that everyone loved, but now it was lightly seasoned with scandal. How dare that old lady take that bearded guy’s Baked Alaska out the freezer before it needed to come out! I have never seen anyone’s face go so red! He looked like a freshly plucked radish with a beard. Soon after, Diana – whose last name is weirdly Beard – left the programme, which was a shame because I would have liked her to be GBBO’s pantomime villain, surviving solely on a diet of vanilla bean custard and mean tweets.

Instead we have to settle for Paul Hollywood, AKA the creepiest lookin’ guy on the BBC. Yeah, he’s the one who, under “Hobbies” on his CV, only lists two things: ‘criticising flan bases’ and ‘sniffing panties’. His too blue eyes and gelled hair and groomed goatee all point to him probably being a retired porn star, which is a strange pairing with Mary Berry, who my boyfriend and I deduced looks like a leather sack filled with cats, controlling her Weekend at Bernie’s style in order to get some cream.

Last week was éclair making. And as uncomfortable as I felt watching Mary guzzling a cream-crammed chocolate éclair into her tiny pie hole, I did actually enjoy the episode. Although it was sad to see Tracey Ann Oberman leave, even though everything she baked was a bit pants. I was relieved that Minty from Eastenders was still in, thank god for his peanut butter masterpieces.

I like Chetna best. She has cool salt n pepper hair and she wears nice cardigans and chunky wooden necklaces. She looks like she smells like patchouli and incense. And she made some shit hot éclairs, which I would totally eat regardless of my gluten intolerance. And when I was all big and puffy and sucking custard off of each pudgy fingertip I would shout through a mouthful of choux pastry “I REGRET NOTHING” and it would be totally true.

There’s one thing that scares me, though. Martha. Whuut is with that girl? I want to like her: she seems pretty nice, she’s polite, and I read she owns a cute labradoodle! But she scares me a little. She looks like a haunted Victorian doll; the type you find after a house fire perfectly preserved even though the room it was in was engulfed in flames. Still got those glassy eyes. Still got that terrifyingly sweet smile. But shit, I’d eat all her éclairs too, I just wouldn’t look directly at her whilst doing so.